The day I was released, I withdrew all of the money and bought a late-night bus ticket for Tunica, Mississippi. My plan was to lose the entire lot in one weekend playing poker, and have a good time doing it, throwing dollars around like someone with a fortune to burn. I didn’t know much about gambling other than the little bit I’d done for cigarettes with big men who took the bets down even when they lost. I doubted they played Spades or Go Fish in casinos. Didn’t matter, though. If somehow I got lucky and won a ton, I’d take it and disappear somewhere, spend the rest of my life coasting around. The house could either kiss or crap on my life and either way it didn’t matter. I wasn’t here to play poker online.

The Greyhound was packed from seam to seam with travel folk. It seemed like more than two-thirds of them were overweight, clogging the aisleways with their beefy limbs. I squeezed my way to the back of the bus into an open row directly across from the toilet. A small sign below the knob that read “OCCUPIED” announced that the unit was out of order. I took my seat and read from a newspaper I found wedged in the pocket of the seat in front of me. “Local man wins millions in World Series of Poker,” the headline said. Soon enough, I thought, when I had enough to get out that far, sure enough that’d be me.